Atmospheric mineral dust (hereby ’dust’) is a key component of the Earth system and has widespread climatic impacts. Dust affects the global climate and environment through, for example, radiative forcing, cloud formation, and nutrient cycles1,2, but its parametrisation in global climate and… Leggi tutto Earth system models is defective3-5. Recently, the current net effect of dust direct radiative forcing on global climate was calculated as most likely negative, although potentially slightly positive given the large uncertainty on this estimate (-0.2 ± 0.5 W m-2 with 90% confidence interval5 ). Many uncertainties remain in such calculations, largely caused by incomplete data on the chemical and physical properties of dust particles, and on the meteorological processes and driving mechanisms behind dust emission, transport, and deposition (‘dust cycle’). While climate models have become increasingly complex, the parametrisation of dust processes, although also improving, lags behind this development, and its uncertainties amplify as models get more sophisticated4 . This limits our understanding on the Earth system as a whole and hampers the ability of models to predict the effects of climate changes on the natural world and societies. A necessary first step to enhance models is to have more observational data on dust properties. The arid and semi-arid East Asia is one of the key global dust sources, but, for example, observational studies on East Asian dust mineralogy were ~50% less than those from the northern African region by 20156 . Compared to other major global dust sources, East Asia is unique in that it also hosts a globally exceptional geologic archive of windblown dust from the past ~25 million years, the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP; Fig. 1). Extensive research, especially provenance studies, on the CLP dust deposits has been a key in revealing the long-term, two-way link between dust and climate changes in the Earth’s history7-10 . Dust provenance analysis is, in fact, one of the few methods that simultaneously provide information on all the steps of the dust cycle (emission, transport, deposition). Because of the scarcity of interdisciplinary studies involving both atmospheric scientists and geologists, the CLP region has much unused potential to establish a link between past and present dust activity to better understand both and to enhance the modelling aspects of dust11-13 . In this project, I study the properties and provenance of dust collected by active and passive samplers in East Asia during 2019–2023.

Le rivage de la Corse s’étire sur plus de 1000 km, ce qui représente plus de la moitié du littoral français de Méditerranée, et 14 % des côtes hexagonales (O.E.C., 2000). La Corse est bordée de plateformes peu étendues (plus de 10… Leggi tutto km), les secteurs les plus larges se situent au Nord et au Sud de l’île. La plateforme orientale, et celle de la Balagne et des Agriates ont une largeur intermédiaire (environ 5 à 10 km), tandis que le reste de la marge est, le long du Cap Corse et de la façade occidentale, extrêmement étroite. Une spécificité du rivage insulaire est la forte proportion de côtes rocheuses (71 %), le littoral sableux se concentrant essentiellement sur la façade maritime orientale de l’île (Pluquet, 2006). Le littoral sableux, et plus globalement les fonds meubles du circalittoral (à partir de -40 m), ont fait l’objet de peu d’études comparativement aux côtes rocheuses et aux fonds durs alors même qu’ils sont la cible du chalutage, une technique de pêche à l’impact physique direct sur les fonds marins (Jones, 1992; Pauly et al., 2002). Parmi ces fonds meubles du circalittoral, on retrouve pourtant dans les « sables » la « Biocénose du détritique côtier (DC) » qui contient des habitats de grand intérêt d’un point de vue biodiversité comme « l’Association du maërl sur DC » et « l’Association à rhodolithes sur DC ».

MARGIN identifies vulnerable areas in cities concerning changes in quality and quantity due to climate change and urbanisation. It develops strategies and tools for adaptation to changing groundwater conditions and extreme levels in order to ensure a sustainable infrastructure development… Leggi tutto and management of groundwater as a resource and ecosystem in cities. The project takes quantitative (groundwater recharge, extremely low and high groundwater levels) as well as qualitative (thermal, chemical, biological) changes/vulnerabilities into account. The project will analyse the requirements and present status of different European cities regarding the management of the groundwater resource in the Alpine Space, gather and analyse the relevant data from city and regional administrations to identify and evaluate vulnerable areas to groundwater changes in quality and quantity. Based on this evaluation user-oriented adaptation strategies and measures will be developed for the implementation in city planning and local water administration procedures. To cover this, MARGIN will conduct this approach in four cities in the Alpine region with different climate and socio-economic conditions, urbanization levels, and administration procedures to cover the variety of the Alpine space: Munich, Milano, Ljubljana, Linz.

The project involves high school students and university students from Italy, Dubai and Maldives. Scientific measurements with the remote TNA sensor will be used mostly to educational purpose, the data will be collected during research campaign mostly carried out on… Leggi tutto sail boat but also on research ship, and focused on microplastic and emerging contaminants determination involving collection of samples of plankton, seawater air, sediments and benthic invertebrates.

C2G supports 8 cities to move away from a project-by-project NBS intervention approach towards the development of greening and renaturing strategies that (a) are cross-scalar and participatory (b) inform existing development agendas and policies, and (c) are implemented through demonstrators that create… Leggi tutto tangible impact on the ground for the local communities and broader ecosystem. This paradigm shift is founded on the operationalisation of Ecosystem Services (ES) in city decision-making at the district and city scale. Specifically, C2G assesses the current supply of ES in cities (e.g. flood and heat risk reduction, recreation) and runs targeted engagement activities to map community vulnerabilities, as perceived by stakeholders themselves. These vulnerabilities translate into key place-based priorities, i.e. the demand for ES. C2G works intensely to bridges this gap between supply and demand using districts as entry points. Considering that citizens experience life and meet their needs in this spatial scale, local greening contributions can significantly improve quality of life. A portfolio of projects is defined in the district scale (zoom-in), while coherence with the broader urban fabric, whether blue, green or grey, is maintained (zoom-out). In this way, C2G achieves cross-scalar ecological connectivity. Ultimately, each city will develop context-specific planning guidelines and nature-inclusion strategies that will be turned into “Design solutions for blue-green-grey infrastructure with biodiversity net-gain”. Demonstrators will apply these solutions with citizens participating along the NBS life cycle, from vulnerability assessments in the early phases through to placemaking activities during implementation. This innovative participation approach ensures that interventions maximise perceived value and minimize trade-off risks (e.g. changes in streetscape uses). Satisfaction assessments shall serve as a validation of the success of the co-design approach

In line with the current guidelines for Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) chemicals and materials, INTEGRANO proposes a general assessment approach based on quantitative evidence to be applied in practice for specific Nano Materials (NMs) design cases referred… Leggi tutto to inorganic, organic and carbon NMs. The development NMs dedicated novel impact categories (ICs) for nano-toxicity and eco-nanotoxicity assessment will enable the integrated application of standardised assessment methodologies. The following four NMs Life Cycle Stages (LCS) are addressed: synthesis, incorporation, use phase and end-of-life. The application of the stage-gate SSbD process through the LCS addresses performance in the five dimensions (5D s): Safety, Environmental, Economic, Social and Functional. Generation of dedicated response functions will allow associating Key Decision Factors (KDFs, such as: concentrations, processing parameters, etc.) to Key Performance Indicators (KPIs, such as: occupational safety, CO2 emissions, job creation potential, NM cost, antibacterial functionality, etc.). SSbD NMs solutions will be obtained by Multi Objective Optimisation Design (MOOD) dedicated algorithm. A dedicated digital Decision Support Toolbox (DST) will elaborate design case specific data and run MOOD algorithm to sort the set of multi-optimal SSbD options, which are simultaneously complying with all the targeted KPIs referred to the 5Ds. The digital supported decision process will help scientists, material engineers, Nano-Enabled Products (NEPs) designers, policymakers and decision-makers to takle the SSbD challenge, allowing for dramatic reduction of Research & Development (RTD) and approval leadtime as well as minimising costs and increasing the transparency of the data, by making the industrial uptake of nanotechnologies more sustainable and viable. INTEGRANO allows the integration with other existing SSbD frameworks by transposing results into other scoring metrics and enabling data exchange.

By preventing all the Earth’s carbon to be released into the oceans and atmosphere or to be stored within rocks, the geological carbon cycle acts as a global long term thermostat, linking the evolution of climate and life to plate tectonics.… Leggi tutto The uncertainty regarding CO2 emissions from continental magmatic arcs, a primary natural input of carbon into the ocean and atmosphere, is currently the greatest limitation to our quantitative understanding of the geological carbon cycle. The high-gain target of MATRICs is to reconstruct the time history of magmatic CO2 emissions from the Neo-Tethyan convergent plate margin and its critical contribution to early Cenozoic climate changes. This ambitious goal will be achieved by iterative geologic data acquisition and state-of-the-art numerical modeling. I propose to couple three established techniques to assess temporal changes in the source and amount of CO2 emissions from the NeoTethyan magmatic arc and assess their effects on early Cenozoic climate: (1) studies of melt inclusions, pockets of melts preserved within magmatic rocks, (2) analyses of trace elements concentrations (e.g., Hg, Te) within the sedimentary record, and (3) numerical petrothermo-mechanical geodynamic and climate carbon cycle modeling. Undertaking this multi-disciplinary and ground-breaking project is now possible, owing to my success in using numerical modeling and diverse geological data to unravel the interactions between tectonics and climate accounting for magmatism. Engaging in a high-gain win-win challenge, MATRICs will either overturn or finally validate untested paradigms about the tectonic forcing of Cenozoic climate. In either case, the knowledge produced about the geological carbon cycle will allow us to better assess the drivers of natural climate variability and, by comparison, the climatic consequences of current anthropic emissions